ului

Ului is not a standalone Romanian word. It is a grammatical ending that appears in the inflected forms of masculine singular nouns to mark the genitive or dative case when the noun is in the definite form. In Romanian, many masculine nouns take a definite suffix, and the combination of the definite form with the genitive/dative case yields endings like -ului.

For example:

- om (man) becomes omul (the man); in the genitive/dative, omului means to/for the man or of the man.

- copil (child) becomes copilul (the child); copilului expresses to/for the child or of the child.

- băiat (boy) becomes băiatul; băiatului is the corresponding genitive/dative form.

This pattern applies to most masculine singular nouns, including those ending in consonants and those with simple stems. The ending -ului is specifically associated with the definite article form in the genitive/dative and should not be confused with the independent pronoun lui, which is a separate word meaning “to him” or “of him.”

In practice, -ului is a common ending in written and spoken Romanian when indicating possession or indirect objects with the definite noun, as in phrases like “casa omului” (the man’s house) or “cadrul copilului” (the child’s frame). The exact form may vary with the noun’s stem, but the general function remains the same: it signals the masculine singular genitive/dative within the definite construction.